Virgin Money Australia selected Temenos SaaS to power the Digital Bank of the future

Press Releases, March 5, 2020

Temenos – Company

GENEVA, Switzerland – March 5, 2020 – Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today announced that it had been selected by Virgin Money Australia, a division of Bank of Queensland (BOQ), as its digital banking technology partner to propel its growth strategy.

Temenos’ cloud-native, cloud-agnostic banking software will enable Virgin Money Australia to benefit from a single, upgradeable, digital SaaS platform to create a simplified digital business model. The API-first technology will enable Virgin Money Australia to offer a marketplace of financial services to help customers improve their financial fitness, as well as bring innovative banking products to market faster, such as savings accounts, and loyalty programs. The bank will offer a seamless digital experience to its customers across digital touchpoints for all retail banking products, reducing client onboarding to just minutes.

At a recent strategy update, Bank of Queensland (BOQ) unveiled its five-year technology strategy to drive differentiated customer experiences, generate sustainable and profitable growth, and create long-term shareholder value. As part of the digital transformation program, the bank will modernize its existing core infrastructure and implement Temenos’ next-generation digital banking platform. The new cloud-native platform will initially be rolled out for Virgin Money Australia customers with transactions and savings accounts and in a later phase for term deposit and lending products. BOQ also announced its intention, following the successful rollout of the Virgin Money Australia Digital Bank, to migrate its retail banking business onto the new digital platform.

To compete in the digital era, BOQ is investing in Virgin Money Australia’s technology overhaul to further accelerate the digital bank’s momentum. After a rigorous selection process, Virgin Money Australia opted for Temenos’ modern end-to-end technology. The agility, scalability and security of Temenos SaaS combined with the Temenos Australian Model Bank approach provides pre-configured, country-specific functionality that will enable Virgin Money Australia to rapidly go live. The project, implemented in conjunction with Deloitte Digital, brings together all the strengths of an established bank with the digital agility of a neobank.

Virgin Money Australia selected Temenos’ front-to-back SaaS offering with Temenos Transact, the next generation in core banking and Temenos Infinity, the leading omnichannel digital banking product covering customer engagement from onboarding, to account servicing, through to long-term retention. Temenos SaaS provides cost and scalability benefits with high security and availability, delivering continuous deployment. Accessing the solution through a subscription model, Virgin Money Australia will be able to scale usage based on business growth.

As part of the project, Virgin Money Australia will consolidate its range of retail banking products onto a single platform, creating a centralized, seamless, digital-first experience for its customers. Temenos’ future-proof technology will also empower Virgin Money Australia to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI), conversational interfaces and other emerging technologies.

With Temenos’ technology, Virgin Money Australia will benefit from a market-leading cost-income ratio and offer better ROI to shareholders and customers. Top performing banks using Temenos software have achieved cost-income ratios of 26.8%, half the industry average, and returns on equity of 29%, three times the industry average.

Greg Boyle, Virgin Money Australia CEO said:

“The new Digital Bank will deliver a truly differentiated and exciting Virgin experience. Importantly, Virgin Money Australia is uniquely positioned to build on our existing relationships with more than 200,000 loyal customers and a home loan portfolio that has quickly grown to more than $3 billion to effectively compete in the Australian market with challenger and incumbent banks alike.

“We are at the beginning of an exciting journey as we build an industry-leading digital bank that will be beautifully simple and rewarding. We are committed to delighting our customers by providing a seamless, end-to-end experience across all channels. With Temenos’ advanced cloud technology, we will have the agility to bring new products to market and differentiate the customer experience. We will also benefit from the speed of deployment and gain operational efficiencies.

“By working with Temenos to deliver Virgin Money Australia’s new Digital Bank, we’ve selected a technology partner that has a strong capability and a proven track record in delivering.”

Max Chuard, Chief Executive Officer, said:

“We are delighted to be chosen as Virgin Money Australia’s technology partner of choice. We’ve seen great momentum in the Australian market from challenger banks to established institutions. Virgin Money Australia sets the bar high for customer experience with its digital-first strategy. Temenos’ API-led, advanced cloud technology will help Virgin Money Australia remain competitive by offering hyper-personalized customer experiences and enabling new business models such as creating marketplaces of financial services and products. With Temenos SaaS, the new digital bank will also benefit from lower total cost of ownership and allow Virgin Money Australia to be agile, rapidly innovate, bring new products to market and offer the best banking customer experiences.”